Tuesday, July 07, 2009
Theory of beauty
What is beautiful? How do we know it? I woke up thinking about that, and I don't have a good comprehensive answer.
Perhaps I need more artist in me...
Perhaps I need more artist in me...
Comments:
<< Home
"Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay" by Otis Redding. And everything Sam Cooke ever did. I don't know how to define beauty any better than that.
Oh, and watching Baylor beat A&M at anything. That is a pretty beautiful experience.
Oh, and watching Baylor beat A&M at anything. That is a pretty beautiful experience.
# posted by 
: 3:52 PM
: 3:52 PM
RRL proves beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I for one find a maroon triumph exceedingly beautiful (and unfortunately, increasingly rare).
You know something is beautiful when even creativity and delusion won't allow you to seriously associate concepts like "ugly" or "average" with whatever it is you are describing.
Did someone put up the Philosophy Man signal?
The beautiful and the knowledge thereof are topics covered by the branch of philosophy known as aesthetics. Suffice it to say that opinions on this topic are wildly divergent.
I am, as with most matters philosophical, something of an unorthodox Kantian/German idealist on matters of the aesthetic. In one sense, I agree with Kant: our desire to find beauty, to find aesthetic truth in the world, comes from our consciousness' imposition of form on reality. Moreso than just a phenomenological fact about ourselves, we experience reality as a synthetic unity, a whole made of disparate parts. But that unification doesn't happen "out there," but rather "in here." As a condition of the possibility of experience.
Therefore, a condition of the possibility of truth in aesthetic judgment is that we must recognize when and where that synthesis is most harmonious. To bring it forward into Husserlian terms, this is what happens when our intentions are fulfilled in a certain way, when we bring together the categorial and the experiential in such a way that we grasp the eidos of an object in a such a way that we relate to it as beautiful.
I recall suggesting to you some art once, specifically because it's meant to be ugly... Goya's Saturn. There's nothing that fits conventional ideals of "beauty" in that piece of art, but it manages to perfectly evoke a certain feeling. The artist meant for it not to be pleasing to the eye in its symmetry or form or coloration or shading... rather, it's meant to be experienced, a unification of visual texture, color, shape, &c. with the noumenal, the first-person, the direct experience of a feeling. That unification, that grandiose synthesis of physical form and emotional essence, reminds us of what it is to be human.
Nietzsche quipped that we have art so that we do not die of wirklichkeit. Truth, knowledge, science, whatever you want to call it... all of human abstract knowledge requires from us a suspension of our natural attitude, a bracketing of theoretical commitments in order that we understand it apart from our place in the world as subjects. Art reminds us of our subjectivity, of the fact that we do not simply experience the world but live in it. It reminds us that there are things out there that are no less striking for their being experienced by us. Kant always remarked that the only two things that really evoked this feeling in him were the starry heavens above him and the moral law within him.
I feel the same.
The beautiful and the knowledge thereof are topics covered by the branch of philosophy known as aesthetics. Suffice it to say that opinions on this topic are wildly divergent.
I am, as with most matters philosophical, something of an unorthodox Kantian/German idealist on matters of the aesthetic. In one sense, I agree with Kant: our desire to find beauty, to find aesthetic truth in the world, comes from our consciousness' imposition of form on reality. Moreso than just a phenomenological fact about ourselves, we experience reality as a synthetic unity, a whole made of disparate parts. But that unification doesn't happen "out there," but rather "in here." As a condition of the possibility of experience.
Therefore, a condition of the possibility of truth in aesthetic judgment is that we must recognize when and where that synthesis is most harmonious. To bring it forward into Husserlian terms, this is what happens when our intentions are fulfilled in a certain way, when we bring together the categorial and the experiential in such a way that we grasp the eidos of an object in a such a way that we relate to it as beautiful.
I recall suggesting to you some art once, specifically because it's meant to be ugly... Goya's Saturn. There's nothing that fits conventional ideals of "beauty" in that piece of art, but it manages to perfectly evoke a certain feeling. The artist meant for it not to be pleasing to the eye in its symmetry or form or coloration or shading... rather, it's meant to be experienced, a unification of visual texture, color, shape, &c. with the noumenal, the first-person, the direct experience of a feeling. That unification, that grandiose synthesis of physical form and emotional essence, reminds us of what it is to be human.
Nietzsche quipped that we have art so that we do not die of wirklichkeit. Truth, knowledge, science, whatever you want to call it... all of human abstract knowledge requires from us a suspension of our natural attitude, a bracketing of theoretical commitments in order that we understand it apart from our place in the world as subjects. Art reminds us of our subjectivity, of the fact that we do not simply experience the world but live in it. It reminds us that there are things out there that are no less striking for their being experienced by us. Kant always remarked that the only two things that really evoked this feeling in him were the starry heavens above him and the moral law within him.
I feel the same.
I wrote this about a year ago. Though incomplete, it's not too awful and might deserve a second look: http://spanishmedievalist.blogspot.com/2008/10/on-beauty.html
They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
To me beauty is personal; shaped by personal experience and our senses. It is an abstract concept unique to each person.
We have a beautiful morning here in Durham. The sky is a cloudless,pale blue; their is little humidity and the air smells clean. To me, in this moment I see, feel and smell beauty. Later today I may taste beauty when I pick a tomato off the vine and bit into its soft, slightly warm reddish orange skin.
I hope all of you experience beauty today.
To me beauty is personal; shaped by personal experience and our senses. It is an abstract concept unique to each person.
We have a beautiful morning here in Durham. The sky is a cloudless,pale blue; their is little humidity and the air smells clean. To me, in this moment I see, feel and smell beauty. Later today I may taste beauty when I pick a tomato off the vine and bit into its soft, slightly warm reddish orange skin.
I hope all of you experience beauty today.
You guys are certainly correct, beauty is subjective. However, I will observe that as I grow older I find beauty more and more. As a younger person, my thoughts were turned inward so much that it must have taken miraculous beauty and showy brightness to attract my eye.
Now, I try to see beauty in leaves, in office buildings and most of all in each person I meet. Each creation is in its way, a work of art, worthy of appreciation. And the joy I find at recognizing beauty that escapes the shallow observer, beauty that will grow, and not fade, with time is phenomenal. The change, of course, is all in me- this beauty was there all the time.
Now, I try to see beauty in leaves, in office buildings and most of all in each person I meet. Each creation is in its way, a work of art, worthy of appreciation. And the joy I find at recognizing beauty that escapes the shallow observer, beauty that will grow, and not fade, with time is phenomenal. The change, of course, is all in me- this beauty was there all the time.
I agree with Ginger.
Also I agree that this song is the most beautiful I have ever heard. it is called the Hoppity Song. Not beautiful but usual standards but once you hear it , it stays in your head and you cannot hear anything else and pretty soon you just SURRENDER and admit that YES it is BEAUTIFUL.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu9bDHdD0Hg
Post a Comment
Also I agree that this song is the most beautiful I have ever heard. it is called the Hoppity Song. Not beautiful but usual standards but once you hear it , it stays in your head and you cannot hear anything else and pretty soon you just SURRENDER and admit that YES it is BEAUTIFUL.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu9bDHdD0Hg
<< Home
